David Cameron today joined forces with France and Germany to demand a freeze in the European Union budget until the end of the decade.
In a joint letter to European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, Mr Cameron, Mr Sarkozy and Mrs Merkel were joined by the Dutch and Finnish premiers in backing the freeze.
They told him that the EU needed to “spend better” and improve efficiencies, reduce fraud and seek economic “leverage”.
“It is possible to implement ambitious European policies for our citizens if we have a stable volume of spending,” the five wrote.
“This calls for a better use of available funds. The challenge for the European Union in the coming years will not be to spend more, but to spend better.
“This challenge can be met by improved European spending efficiency, accurate tracking of incurred commitment appropriations, seeking out where we can gain economic leverage and simplifying the financial framework.”
The European allies insisted that the Union’s budget should rise by no more than the rate of inflation over the period 2014-20, with Mr Cameron claiming the document put down “a firm marker” of their determination not to allow the budget to swell.
Speaking at the end of the European Council summit in Brussels, Mr Cameron said he had secured a “clear and unanimous agreement” that his country would not be “dragged into bailing out the eurozone” as part of a new stability mechanism to be introduced in 2013.
The UK would still be part of the existing emergency mechanism until then, but that had been a commitment entered into by the former Labour government and “we have to live with it”, he said.
Mr Cameron said the text covered negotiations on the EU budgets for 2012 and 2013 as well as the longer-term perspective for 2014-20.
“What I am doing, together with our key partners in Europe, is putting down a firm marker for these negotiations,” he said.
“All around Europe, countries are tightening their belts to deal with their deficits. Europe can’t be immune from that.
“We want to see real budgetary restraint for 2014-20 - the time of the next financial perspective. That is why the text we will publish talks about at least a real-term freeze in the budget for that period.”
He described the agreement between Britain, France and Germany as “incredibly significant” and a “huge achievement”.
Agencies